


real, complicated, bitter happiness.

by angstics



Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (yeah), After Crabgate, Before Adam leaves for Harvard, Bittersweet, Book 1: Call Down the Hawk, CDTH spoilers, Comfort, Crying, Crying Club is worried that Adam is in an abusive relationship after Crabgate (he isn't), Gangsey cameo!, Gen, Harvard Era, I Love Adam Parrish, I had to google maps the Harvard campus, Intervention, M/M, puts "Is there any version of you that could come with me to Cambridge?" in context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstics/pseuds/angstics
Summary: Is there any version of you that could come with me to Cambridge?How the answer went frommaybetonotoalways.
Relationships: Adam Parrish & The Crying Club, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 16
Kudos: 208





	real, complicated, bitter happiness.

They hugged farewell.

“Call me later,” Adam whispered in Ronan’s ear, a reverse promise. Ronan looked away without a word.

Then, with a blank-faced Declan and an oblivious Matthew and 2 tons of crab meat in the trunk, Ronan left Harvard, taking with him the hope Adam had hid away since the summer. _Is there any version of you that could come with me to Cambridge?_ No, no.

Like a prisoner on death row, Adam walked back to his dorm room. He thought he could wind down there but the dented walls and smashed-in window and disapproving head shakes of his neighbors flared him beyond comfort. So without a second thought, Adam turned the corner out of his dorm building and past the courtyard he found Ronan in and up a road that lead to Cambridge Common, a park near Harvard. It wasn’t his usual choice of peacetime, but it was unlikely he’d see anyone he knew here. So he walked up the path, past statues with purpose and houses with history and children with family, everything that contradicted with Adam.

He walked for so long that all he could think about was what he saw and felt in the moment. The high sky, with the cool breeze on his bare neck, and the sunshine in his eye. Reaching, reaching trees, shedding their dying, dying leaves as fall settled. The steadiness he felt was the fakest kind he’d ever forged. The foundation of it relied on ignorance, the most regressive and illogical and ineffective vessel of processing. But he needed it. He needed the air and the movement in his legs and the red-hot fire within him. He needed anything but the memories of the past few hours.

So he walked until the morning became noon.

Eventually, when his legs caught up to the eventuality before his head could, he’d landed back in front of Thayer. Something that felt like shame came from the heat in his chest. Something that felt like indignation smothered it. He walked to his dorm.

Surprisingly, almost everything was fixed, including the windowpane. Only a few artifacts remained. The most prevalent was the musty and familiar smell of blood.

“You can’t open it yet.” Adam flinched back to the closed dorm room. Fletcher was running his hands over the flag in his lap, smoothing down the creases over and over like he’d been doing it all day. “The window hinge’s broken.”

Adam wasn’t planning on opening the window. The only thing he wanted to do was forget who he was for a few hours by diving into his American Literature note-taking. “Oh,” he said, voice rough. “Alright.” It had been so long since something strange had happened in his life. The last time was his first week at Harvard, when he stupidly scryed without supervision. But no one had seen that. No one. Now, he couldn’t help but feel bare. Like when he was caught sneaking out by his parents. Like when he’d gotten horribly furious in front of Gansey. Like when he’d seen a Cabeswater ( _Cabeswater_ ) vision for the first time. This part of himself wasn’t for anyone but himself and a select few.

It felt dirty.

He sat on his desk, ignoring the toppled stack of papers. He held his messenger bag. He found his textbook. He found his notebook. He put everything on the table. He stared.

The burning mass on his chest didn’t wane. It pinned his arms to his sides, twisted his head on the ground.

 _Goddamn_.

“Adam,” Fletcher said, low yet booming. “We need to talk.”

“Later.”

“No.” Adam turned his head with raised eyebrows. It wasn’t like Fletcher to be stubborn. “They’re coming. They. Our friends.”

Instantly, as if Adam’s life was a play, someone ratted on the door. Adam’s body tensed. “What’s going on?” Fletcher opened the door, regretful despite going along with what was going on. Four busy bodies rustled in– Gillian, Benjy, Eliot, and Jamie, the hall’s Proctor.

The room was both too big and too small. Every person had some degree of dread in their expression– Fletcher with a frown, Gillian with a stitch between her eyebrows, Benjy with a rare downturn of his lips, Eliot with their eyes to the ground, and Jamie with a Gansey-type concerned expression.

Adam was going to laugh and he was going to cry. “What, is this an intervention?”

They shrugged as one. So he’d guessed right.

Gillian spoke first, as always. “We’re worried about you, Adam. I know that it hasn’t been long but- we couldn’t stand the thought of you being in danger.”

“I’m fine.” It wasn’t a lie. In ways people like them could understand, he was fine.

They all exchanged a look. The way they stood, in a formal line of defense, made him feel trapped in. He guessed that that was the goal of an intervention. “When we talked, it didn’t seem like you were fine,” Jamie said. “It seemed like you were distraught.”

“Fletcher said you looked like a wild animal. You were _hurt_.” Gillian’s words hardened. “Because of your boyfriend.”

They were worried. For what? “It wasn’t his fault.”

Eliot flexed their hands into curved handles of steel. Adam had never seen them angry; it betrayed their joyous, easy-going attitude. This was obviously serious to Eliot. To all of them. “Adam, he got drunk and trashed your room. He got drunk and you woke up bleeding.”

“It isn’t like that.” He knew what it sounded like, but it wasn’t. He knew, factually and objectively and entirely, that it wasn’t. Ronan would never. He already showed him he would _never_. “It was just an accident. It won’t happen again. I promise you, it’s fine.”

“This isn’t fine!” Eliot erupted. “Abuse isn’t fine! We can’t leave you in a relationship with a violent drunkard.”

Gillian seized their arm. “We care about you. We want you to be safe and happy. If just one night with that man resulted in this, how can we trust him with you?”

Jamie tapped into his Proctor training. “Dangerous relationships aren’t a thing to be ashamed of. We can help.”

They couldn’t be any further from the truth, but the intention behind their words made him want to jump from his skin. These days, tears weren’t a thing he had to worry about. There was no need for them. He’d only cried once this year, during the summer. It was different for more than that record-breaker. It was also the first time he’d cried in front of someone he loved. It was his last day in Virginia before he left for Harvard and the day ran long with everything already packed. He planned to spend it all with people he cared for.

He went to 300 Fox Way and shared a blueberry pie with the residents. He went on one last adventure with Gansey and Blue and Ronan, up the stream that lined the Henrietta mountains. The blues and greens and yellows of that day were beautiful, so their trek down and up the easy path looked like a dream. Even Henry joined them at Nino’s for lunch. Before he returned to the Barns to grab his bags, Adam bumped fists and embraced every one of them. He knew he would miss them as time went on, but right then he felt at peace. A bittersweet ending.

The long ride up to the Barns was quiet. The walk up the porch and into the main house and into their room was quiet. Ronan was quiet; Adam could tell because he didn’t say a thing when Opal stomped over the carpet with mud on her hooves to hug Adam’s leg.

“Hey,” he said, swiping the tip of his finger down Ronan’s celtic nose. They were both lying on the bed, facing each other. “What’s wrong?”

Ronan looked at him. The looking turned into staring. Adam liked this Ronan-exclusive habit. It meant he was open and thinking. Ronan swiped his fingers over his lips then over Adam’s. Adam repressed the urge to open his mouth.

“Nothing. Everything.”

And then it happened. Out of nowhere, out of no particular emotion, out of no evolutionary need to let go, Adam felt water tip out of his eyes and diagonally to the pillow under their heads. There was no pressure in his eyes like there had been every other time this happened. His head wasn’t a storm of feeling. He wasn’t warm all over. He just cried.

Those tears weren’t the rotten fruit of frustration or anger or hatred or pain or sickness or confusion or anything, anything that had plagued his life for years. No, no. This was the result of real, complicated, bitter happiness. _Is there any version of you that could come with me to Cambridge?_ Ronan had kissed him and whispered sweetly on his lips: _maybe, maybe_.

And so when smudged Benjy said, speaking for the first time, “You’re strong, Adam. Stronger than anyone else I know. We just care,” Adam felt those same tears come over him. Two drops, one from each eye, fled down his cheeks. They were rootless and the only ones that fell.

“Oh no,” Gillian said, her hands already rubbing his cheeks. Eliot followed her to Adam’s right shoulder and Benji to his left and Fletcher just behind Gillian and Jamie behind him. “ _Oh no_.”

Adam felt he should clarify as best as he could. “Ronan’s good. He’s so good. Things just get away sometimes and it isn’t his fault. He hates what happened as much as I do, probably more. But it isn’t his fault and he never meant to do it. He would die before he hurt me. I swear it.” They looked hesitant. “Thank you, though, for caring. But we’ll be okay. Soon.”

Someone outside began a squeaky trumpet solo and the tension in the room broke. Gillian was the first to speak again, “We have your back. It’s Adam _and_ The Crying Club.”

Eliot held his shoulder tightly. The hover of the rest of them eased the red heat in his chest. The thought of his road-tripping best friends steadied him, properly this time. He didn’t feel very alone.

He thought of Ronan, staring at Adam as if he was truly seeing him. _Is there any version of you that could come with me to Cambridge?_ Ronan was always there. Always, always.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments and bookmarks make me all feel incredibly good. Thank you for reading!


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